More than 2,500 participants expected at Hawaii Convention Center, July 31-August 4

HONOLULU — Hawaiʻi is serving as host to more than 2,500 participants in the Microscopy and Microanalysis 2005 Meeting, scheduled for July 31-August 4, at the Hawaiʻi Convention Center. The meeting will bring together biological scientists, material scientists, instrument developers and industry representatives from around the world to discuss microscopy and related techniques and their use in basic and applied research.

The meeting is co-sponsored by seven societies—Microscopy Society of America (MSA), Microbeam Analysis Society (MAS), International Metallographic Society (IMS), Australian Microscopy and Microanalysis Society (AMMS, Inc.), Australian Microbeam Analysis Society (AMAS), Microscopy New Zealand (MNZ), and the Committee of Asia-Pacific Societies for Microscopy (CAPSM)—bringing a fresh Pacific and Asian flavor to the conference.

The conference features more than 1,100 presentations in 30 technical symposia in the biological sciences, physical sciences, and advances in instrumentation and techniques. Examples of biological topics to be addressed include "Tracking and Tagging Stem Cells," "Use of Green Fluorescent Proteins," and "Cell Communication and Pathology." The use of microscopy in the study of viruses, infectious diseases and their associated pathologies will also be addressed.

Symposia in the physical sciences will examine the role of microscopy and microanalysis in the study of extraterrestrial materials, catalysts, and metallographic techniques, failure analysis and other nanotechnology applications. A special Presidential Symposium, "The Golden Anniversary of Imaging Atoms," commemorates the 50th anniversary of the first atomic images using field-ion microscopy.

Serving as co-chairs of the Local Arrangements Committee for the conference are Tina Carvalho and Marilyn Dunlap of the Biological Electron Microscopy Facility at the University of Hawaiʻi‘s Pacific Biosciences Research Center, who have been working on various aspects of planning the meeting for the past five years.

In addition, various university faculty and researchers are coordinating symposiums or will be making presentations, including:

· Dr. Klaus Keil, interim dean of the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology — co-organizer of a symposium on "Microanalysis of Extraterrestrial Materials: New Techniques and Applications," which will discuss the techniques being developed to study samples collected from a comet by NASA‘s Stardust mission.

· Dr. David Christopher, professor of molecular biosciences and bioengineering, UH Mānoa College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources — organizer of a symposium on "Advances in Structural Analysis of Plant Cell Functions."

· Dr. Rolf-Peter Kudritzki, director, Institute for Astronomy — MSA Presidential Happenings presentation on "Astronomy in Hawaii—Exploring Our Universe With the Largest Telescopes in the World."

The meeting also includes a large commercial exhibition where over 100 vendors of electron, atomic force, confocal and other types of microscopes and analytical and preparative equipment will provide the unique opportunity for hands-on learning with the largest variety of state-of-the-art instrumentation found at any microscopy meeting worldwide.

For more information about the meeting, visit www.microscopy.org/MMMeetings/MM05/MMHomePage.html.